They show Potter clinging to cliffs with no safety rope and perching on a 2cm-thick highline some 790m (2,590ft) above the ground â more than two-and-a-half times the height of the Eiffel Tower.

In one image, taken in Yosemite National Park, in California, he barely manages to hold on to an inverted cliff edge on Glacier Point called Heaven while dangling precariously 915m above the valleys beneath him.

Potter treading the fine line between life and death as he explores the mighty Yosemite (Picture: Mikey Schaefer/Nat Geo Stock/Caters)

Potter, 39, said: âWhen Iâm on the highline, it feels like Iâm hovering in space.

âI know itâs insane to think I could fly but to make it possible, you truly have to believe in it â to go to a place thatâs not accepted.

âI donât have thoughts of an afterlife. I think dying is like when you swat a fly â itâs over.

âIâm addicted to the heightened awareness I get when thereâs a death consequence,â Potter added. âMy vision is sharper and Iâm more sensitive to sounds, my sense of balance and the beauty all around me.

âA lot of my creativity comes from this nearly insane obsession. Something sparkles in my mind and then nothing else in life matters.â

Potter was captured by photographers Jimmy Chin and Mikey Schaefer, who said: âWhen Dean first free-soloed this, it was the hardest rope-less climb done in Yosemite.â